Every Project Has Unique Technical Challenges to Solve

This type of project requires a deep understanding of printing onto poly bags in terms of what inks will work. Our choice of inks also had to be informed by the conditions in which the bags would be used, which includes not only the heat and humidity common at outdoor events in the Midwest but also the intense humidity and greasiness in the air within the context of their popping station booth set up at those events. 

In addition to those sorts of printing challenges, there’s also the bags themselves. The client might be used to poly bags (Sweet-D-Licious offers two sizes of their product, a medium bag, and a large bag) of certain sizes and a thickness they have found to be just right. These kinds of bag specifications do matter in terms of ordering the bags and what they cost to order from bag manufacturers. In addition to the cost of the bags themselves, these bag specifications also affect the printing process. Post-printing on a prefabricated poly bag in low quantities is often simply not cost-effective. This can be very disappointing for a client to find out because when you start talking about much larger quantities that bring the per-bag cost way down, those quantities and the financial commitment to get there can be very intimidating for a small business.

In the case of kettle corn, two common sizes of flat poly bags would be 9 inches wide by 15 inches high for the medium bag, and 9 inches wide by 24 inches high for the large bag. This is where we also get into additional considerations around the manufacturer of the poly bags, such as what their minimum orders are, and where the price breaks fall for cost-effectiveness. All minimums for poly bags are based on the minimum poundage of raw material required for an order.  This is fairly consistent with all manufacturers.  For the 9×15 bag, the minimum is a higher quantity for ordering because it’s a small bag and requires more bags to reach the minimum film requirement. The minimum run for those would be 10,000 bags. Because the 9×24 bag is a larger size, the minimum run on those can be only 7,500. These order minimums can sometimes make a small business client start to feel very anxious, and our goal is to work with our customers to find the ideal bag and quantity combination that fits their company best!

The bag quantities for printing in color also come into play. How many colors of print will be needed to achieve that artwork? As the number of ink colors goes up, so must the quantity of bags go up to make it financially viable for us as the vendor. More ink colors increase the setup time for the project, so from the vendor’s perspective, it’s usually not financially viable to do four-color printing on the minimum number of bags outlined above. This leads to higher minimums, which again can make a small business owner uncomfortable.

The good news in this case study is that it all came together! The customer understood that artwork changes needed to be made to turn their artwork into a four-color image in order to most efficiently print the poly bags keeping their order quantities lower while still providing them with a beautiful branded packaging piece. Sweet-D-Licious was all in and loved the bags, so it was a definite win-win for the client and vendor!

Clients Must Understand the Value They Receive 

That pain point of manually applying printed labels to the bag was the most important thing the client understood we were solving. But in addition to that pain point, there were other logistical considerations that also came into play. In their previous way of doing things, it was easy for there to be a mismatch between the quantity of bags on hand and labels on hand. There were times when they ran out of bags even though they had labels and then other times when they had plenty of bags on hand but ran out of labels. Having the bags and branding happen together as one smooth process, with only one vendor instead of two, was another pain point we solved that made the logistics of their business operations simpler and hassle-free.

Also, there is an additional logistical concern in terms of getting two different products (the bags and the labels) from two different vendors in an event-driven business environment. If they had an important event coming up and saw they needed more bags, would they be able to get them in on time? In the case of a global pandemic, lead times on orders for all sorts of things suddenly became very long. Because Brown & Pratt is in the packaging industry, we know the ins and outs of getting what we need when we need it, even in the midst of supply chain disruptions. A busy small business owner simply can’t navigate all of that far enough in advance to avoid potential snags and delays. 

When a client understands how many pain points you’re solving for them, the results can often be referral business. In this case, Sweet-D-Licious referred another kettle corn business to us, one that they are friendly with when they run into each other at the one event they both attend, so it wasn’t really a direct competitor. When this other kettle corn business owner was explaining their packaging challenges, the Sweet-D-Licious owner simply told them how very happy she was with the working relationship she had with Brown & Pratt. This other kettle corn business needed the same type of packaging and the same type of printing and immediately got in touch with us after the event. The result? We are now proud to have two very similar kettle corn companies among our valued partners!